Deadly Virus May Have Emerged a Year Earlier, Study Says

The new coronavirus that’s killed 33
people since September may have emerged almost a year earlier
than the first known case and circulated unnoticed for that
time, a study showed.

The genetic sequence of a virus taken from a 73-year-old
patient who died in Munich in March, together with sequences
from four other patients, suggests a common ancestor halfway
through 2011, researchers at the University of Bonn Medical
Center in Germany, wrote in The Lancet Infectious Diseases
journal today. The first known case was in Jordan in April 2012.

The finding provides another clue as researchers try to
figure out where the virus came from and how it’s spreading.
While most cases have been identified in Saudi Arabia, they’ve
also been detected in Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates,
France, Germany, Italy, Tunisia and the U.K., according to the
World Health Organization.

“Genetic data are urgently needed to establish the spatial
and temporal distribution of cases, estimate the number of
independent human chains of transmission, and thus better assess
the threat” the virus poses, researchers led by Christian
Drosten wrote.

The virus now known as Middle East respiratory syndrome
coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, has sickened at least 58 people
worldwide since September, and killed 33, according to the WHO.

Bat Infection

The virus appears most closely related to one taken from a
bat in the Netherlands in 2008, Andrew Rambaut, a professor
molecular evolution at the University of Edinburgh, wrote on his
blog. The virus may have crossed from bats to a domesticated or
agricultural animal, and from there spread into humans, Rambaut
wrote.

The Munich patient owned camels and had taken care of a
sick animal shortly before showing symptoms of disease, Drosten
and colleagues wrote, citing the dead man’s relatives. No animal
samples could be retrieved, they said.

Coronaviruses are a family of pathogens that cause
illnesses ranging from the common cold to SARS, which sickened
more than 8,000 people and killed 774 in 2002 and 2003,
according to the WHO. While the new virus is related to the one
that causes SARS, it appears far less transmissible, the WHO has
said.